


Lequel d'Orleans

by AMarguerite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3209504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the merrymisfest exchange. Bahorel, Jehn, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras take a road trip from Paris to Orleans to Lyons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lequel d'Orleans

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Happy holidays needsmoreresearch! I couldn’t combine all your prompts, but I hope you enjoy this canon-era roadtrip, starring Bahorel. Everything about dialects, roads, methods of transport, etc. came from the excellent Graham Robb book, The Discovery of France. The bit about students returning home from the fall break in September and October comes from MmeBahorel’s excellent post: http://corinthe.livejournal.com/19098.html. Volvelles are these super duper cool things: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvelle

“Have you got the cypher worked out now?” asked Courfeyrac, in wheedling tones. He had draped himself over the pile of cushions obscuring Jehan’s bed, and either looked like Lord Byron on his sickbed in Greece, or a cat sprawling out in a patch of sunlight. Bahorel had not yet determined which metaphor was more apt. Courfeyrac's carefully windswept curls were certainly in imitation of Byron, and his look of piteous suffering was equally Romantic, but his boneless sprawl suggested ‘feline’ more than ‘fiendish poet.’ Bahorel turned to Bossuet, also on cushions on the floor, but Bossuet was asleep and thus could not be called upon to be witty.

Bahorel instead turned to the table, where Jehan and Combeferre were bent over volvelles and sheets of paper, and said, “Combeferre, your cue.”

Combeferre belatedly looked up from the page. “Hm?”

“What does it say?” prompted Bahorel.

“It says, ‘At the fall break,’ so far,” said Combeferre. “The Freemasons use a complicated code.”

“They always do,” said Jehan, loftily. “Why bother with cyphers unless they are complicated?”

Bahorel did not have much sympathy for the Freemason way of doing things. He made himself more comfortable with the thought that Combeferre must have something to do that did not involve hacking dead people to bits. It might as well be picking apart code instead of corpses.

“At the fall break, gunpowder to Lyons,” said Jehan, suddenly. Like Enjolras, he was prone to sudden fits of inspiration. “See, Combeferre, though it is a cypher based on the Fibonacci sequence, that’s the numeric code for gunpowder here--”

“And Lyons?”

This turned out to be a guess, but it was a correct one. Bossuet stirred, and Courfeyrac sat up. They had all heard rumblings from the silk workers of Lyons. Revolution was probable.

“The Masons wish you to take gunpowder to Lyons?” asked Courfeyrac. “A noble goal, to be sure, but where are we to get the gunpowder?”

“It is in the Loire, somewhere, if I have got the code correct,” said Jehan, holding up the paper and squinting at it.

“Who lives near the Loire?” asked Courfeyrac. “I’m too far south for that, Bousset too far north-- does Enjolras live in Loire?”

Combeferre said, almost absent-mindedly. “Somewhere around Blois, I think. The Loire for certain.”

“Not in Blois itself, though,” offered Courfeyrac. “I remember something about a grandfather. Though that could be Marius.”

“Who?” asked Bossuet.

“L’Aigle des Maux!” exclaimed Courfeyrac. “I am surprised at you! Do you not keep a careful tally of all the young men you impersonate in law classes?”

“Alas alack! My wits have vanished with my hair,” replied Bossuet, running his hands over his bald head. “No, ask me again, I have a better response.”

Courfeyrac dutifully asked again. Bossuet this time replied,  “I am so carefully impersonating a lawyer I have no room in my head to keep track of all the other people I am impersonating.”

“Even the mention of the law school gives me a chill,” said Bahorel, shuddering. “Combeferre, does a memory stir?”

“It was a city,” said Combeferre. “Poiters?”

“I recall thinking to myself, ‘oh, of course,’ when I heard,” mused Jehan.

“Orleans?” hazarded Bahorel.

He was met with laughter, sighs, and a chorus of, ‘Oh of course!’

“I am sure they can get the gunpowder to Orleans if we promise to get it the rest of the way to Lyons,” said Jehan. “These are from my brother Masons in... Nantes? Yes, Nantes. It is along the Loire.”

“We have to have a plausible reason to be traveling,” Combeferre murmured, drumming his fingers on the table.

“It’s September,” said Bahorel. “We must go home to help with the harvest.”

A knock came at the door; Jehan sprang up, and the others sprawled about in Orientalist attitudes (Combeferre mostly just sprawled over the papers). It was only Enjolras at the door, however. Everyone relaxed from their poses, and Combeferre eagerly reported all to Enjolras.

Enjolras sat in the window ledge, listening gravely to them all, almost indifferent to the fading heat of the August sun. “I am indeed from Orleans,” he confirmed, when Combeferre had concluded. “It is an easy journey from Paris to Orleans. Eight hours, if horses and carriage are both in good order.”

“So we may take the diligence out of Paris with all the other students returning home,” Combeferre deduced. “But we cannot take the diligence from Orleans to Lyons with five barrels of gunpowder.”

“That is indeed, an unreasonable amount of gunpowder to take on the diligence,” agreed Bossuet. “Though, I must confess, I do not think there is actually a reasonable amount of gunpowder to take on the diligence.”

“We need not take the diligence,” said Enjolras. He spoke quietly, but his voice carried, and all eyes turned to him. “My grandfather will give us one of his wagons.”

Though Enjolras generally seemed to defy the common pattern of mortal life, it was generally supposed that he at one point had a mother. And, presumably a father, but Bahorel would not have ruled out the possibility of a virgin birth.

Still, it startled everyone considerably to know that Enjolras had a grandfather, let alone one with wagons.

Bossuet said something vague about how the wagons must normally be used for gunpowder.

Enjolras smiled. “No, wine.”

“You come from a family of vinters?” asked Bahorel, rather surprised.

“Yes.”

“I rather thought it would be....” Jehan searched for an appropriate occupation for Enjolras’s relations. “I’m not sure. I always thought you might have a family full of famous statesmen.”

“Just vinters,” replied Enjolras, though he smiled. “My grandfather tried to be a representative to the first national assembly, but he did not win the election.”

“Was he... too passionate?” guessed Bossuet.

“No, he was too nervous to deliver his speech. He withdrew.”

This could not be believed.

At least, by all except Combeferre, who denied nothing, not even ghosts, and thus could accept that Enjolras came from a family of vinters who suffered from stage fright. Admittedly, Combeferre accepted this with the faintest lift of an eyebrow, but still, he accepted it.

“But you have always been in Orleans?” persisted Bossuet.

“I believe so,” Enjolras replied. “I only left that city to come to Paris.”

This satisfied everyone’s sense of symbolism, even Bahorel’s. He could forgive Enjolras’s lack of illustrious family if said family came from Orleans. Despite its impossibility, Bahorel felt certain Enjolras was somehow the direct descendant of the maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc.

“I will write to my grandfather,” said Enjolras. “How many is he to expect?”

Joly had to bow out-- he was expected home to actually help with the harvest-- and Bossuet had no money to travel with them. Feuilly could not miss work. Grantaire was raving drunk and could not remain silent long enough to be asked whether or not he’d like to go. Bahorel made the executive decision that no one would enjoy listening to Grantaire rant for eight hours straight and did not try to extend the invitation when Grantaire was in a soberer mood. Enjolras, of course, had to go, in order to secure the carts. Where Enjolras went, so did Combeferre, and if Enjolras and Combeferre were going, Courfeyrac could not bear to be left behind. Jehan needed to go to secure the gunpowder, and Bahorel didn’t trust a group made of his two most Romantic friends and his two most intelligent friends to do something as mundane and practical as drive a cart between two cities for two weeks.

“It is settled then,” said Jehan, twirling his quill like the ballerina Marie Taglioni twirled fans onstage in her dances. “We friends must hit the road.”

 

***

 

To Bahorel fell the unlikely task of mapping a route. “From Paris to Orleans, it’s eight hours, according to Enjolras. I wager it’s closer to ten or eleven, depending on the roads, the thirst of the driver--”

“Take the diligence instead of a coucou, and it’s eight hours,” said his mistress, Rosalie, as she wandered around the apartment. “The Paris-Orleans road is the best in France.”

“A what?”

She looked heavenward. “La-de-dah! Aren’t we a fine aristo? You’ve never ridden a coucou?”

“I cannot say that I have, no.”

“It’s this cart that looks like a cuckoo-clock,” said Rosalie, trying to give an impression of its size with her arms. “It’s what they give to asthmatic horses not old enough to turn into glue. To become a coucou driver you have to be able to drink your weight in beer and be more sarcastic than a ticketing agent at a coach company.”

“Impossible!”

Rosalie dimpled. “So you would believe! I’ve never ridden in one that was at full capacity, because they keep finding places to put people-- by the driver, hanging off the rear of the coach, or even in the wicker basket under the body of the coach.”

“It’s that supposed to be used for luggage?” asked Bahorel, thinking back the last time he’d ridden in the diligence.

“Or for apprentices headed to cities,” said Rosalie, with a shrug. “It’s cheap, that’s what matters. But diligence to Orleans, I imagine?”

“Yes, my general. From then on, we follow the Loire to Orleans. In a cart.” Bahorel reached up and stretched. His broad shoulders cracked. “I haven’t driven a cart farther than... Let me think.... From the family farm to Toulouse in years.”

“Sounds like a wonderful roadtrip: you, two frighteningly competent friends, two Romantic friends, and a cart full of gunpowder,” opined Rosalie, sorting through a trunk. “Ah ha! Here it is.” She pulled out a case. “I picked these up from the Temple bazar for a trice. Old lead typeface. None of the letters match.”

“It shall be another war of words.”

“I’d throw these at you if I had the upper arm strength,” grumbled Rosalie. “They’ll make better bullets than type. Where’s your trunk?”

Bahorel grinned. “Ah Rosalie, the Saint-Simonists will come looking for you.”

“What? Why? I’ve no interest in living in their free love commune. I had enough trouble negotiating our treaty.”

“I was going to declare you a female Messiah!”

Rosalie was busy poking around Bahorel’s trunk and merely grunted. “That’s the smartest part of their tenants.”

“Moreso than the elevation of man through education?”

“Yes, for all your fine education--” Rosalie waved above her head a pornographic novel Bahorel had borrowed from Courfeyrac and never bothered to return “--it is always us women left to organize things. You mark me, the world would be a much neater place if women had the running of it.”

“Of that I’ve no doubt,” said Bahorel, studying the map. He walked his fingers from Orleans to Blois. “Look at how neatly Joan of Arc managed the siege of Orleans. Five months of a stalemate and in eight days, she chased all the English from their strongholds in the Loire.”

“Once you’ve finished your smut, we can talk over Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies.”

“But there is always so much smut to read,” said Bahorel, pitifully.

 

***

 

The coach fairly bristled with pockets for what luggage was not tied on in the back. Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jehan, and Bahorel crammed into one of the compartments, drawing the dividing curtain against the other two compartments of the diligence. Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre took the forward-facing seat, so Enjolras might be able to see the road and give them an idea of their progress, and so that Combeferre could look at the passing countryside and thus keep from becoming bored. Courfeyrac sat between them so that he could best talk to Jehan and Bahorel (people always interested him more than scenery). Jehan and Bahorel were indifferent to the road, and preferred to sit together, and so faced backwards the whole eight hours.

“It is a good thing we are leaving from Paris,” said Bahorel, as they all struggled to arrange their knees in the cramped space between the two seats. “In some carriages going further south, there is no chance of getting a seat. Everyone from Paris is still in the coach.”

“All roads lead to and from Paris,” said Courfeyrac.

“There are geographic reasons for it,” said Combeferre, and he told them all about it during the first stage of the journey.

Every seven leagues they stopped at a posting house, a figure that greatly excited Jehan. “You know, I think seven league boots must come from the boots of the postillion,” he exclaimed, as they watched the postillion dismount and stretch. “How wonderful!”

Talk of fairy tales sustained them for a time, and when that grew tiresome, Courfeyrac obligingly fell asleep, and the rest of them took up books or daydreams.

At the second to last stop, Bahorel shook Courfeyrac awake saying, “Up and up mon vieux, we are nearly there, and I want to go stretch my legs.”

“That is true,” said Courfeyrac, stretching like a cat. Jehan scrambled out of the way and out of the carriage, muttering about matters of a personal nature that must be immediately tended to. “I haven’t moved mine these past six hours or more--” Courfeyrac paused, and looked down at himself in shock. “I’m clean!”

“We didn’t spill anything on you as you slept, tempting as it was,” agreed Bahorel, with a smile.

“No, no, I mean, there’s no dust!” Courfeyrac turned imploringly to Bahorel. “My fine Gascon, you are familiar with the land of Oc over Oie, and the fine coat of dust the Occitan roads give you if you haven’t the funds or the foresight to go by canal instead.”

Bahorel looked down at himself in mild surprise. “So indeed! I hadn’t noticed. Alas, you are more the dandy than even I, Courfeyrac! Imagine, no dust!”

Enjolras almost laughed. “You both look so surprised.”

“There’s no dust!” exclaimed Courfeyrac, in disbelief. “No dust, and no rattling roads, and no horses needing to be pried out of the mud--”

Enjolras smiled broadly then, a flash of white teeth in the growing darkness. “Orleans farmers and carters often find themselves conscripted to bring blocks of limestone to Paris.”

“You have roads even better than the Romans,” said Courfeyrac.

“Hm,” said Combeferre, as they managed their awkward tumble-scramble out of the cart and into the inn, for what greasy food could be got, and what privacy could be offered by strategically placed bushes. “I wonder....”

“Yes?” said Enjolras.

“At times it feels like the countryside is still recovering from the fall of the Roman Empire,” said Combeferre, surveying, with dismay, the clump of vegetation Jehan abashedly pointed to as the privy. “I wonder, now, if establishing a working national sanitation system isn’t the way to pull France into the nineteenth century.”

“I’m not sure that’s how the Romans divided and conquered,” said Bahorel. “Conquer the savage places of the world with impressives feats-- not of swordsmanship but engineering?”

“Who said the road to progress had to be only metaphorical?” said Enjolras, with a faint smile.

 

***

 

Enjolras’s grandfather was as reserved as Enjolras, but substantial more subdued. He had a passion not for the absolute, but for his vines. Bahorel liked Grandpere Enjolras. Their peasant souls spoke to each other.

Grandpere Enjolras recognized that all things flowed from the provinces to Paris, where through the mysterious alchemy of cities all raw materials turned into products of Empire. He sent his wines up north and so had sent his son and now his grandson. Orleans had not much changed since the upheavals of the Revolution. Grandpere Enjolras had bought up the lands he’d used to rent, and begun to store his wines in the cave in the limestone cliffs where he had once lived. So seismic a change had understandably made Grandpere Enjolras phlegmatic in the face of all other events in his life.

He accepted without question that there was evidently to be another revolution, and that his grandson would take part in it. His chief concern was that his grandson might not be wearing a scarf while mounting barricade.

“The whole family is prone to the consumption,” said Grandpere Enjolras to Combeferre, almost worriedly. “It took everyone but me and the boy. You must make certain he has something about his throat and does not sleep in the damp. His constitution is as strong as my own, but there is no point in taking risks.”

Enjolras himself had never been sick a day in his life (and probably had never been injured in any fight), so Bahorel found this worrying both touching and absurd. Enjolras would never do anything so passive as die from a wasting disease.  

Enjolras and Jehan disappeared one afternoon with two horses and an empty cart and then reappeared with both horses and a full cart in the evening.

Grandpere Enjolras observed this and said, to the farm hands, “Special delivery to Lyons.”

They were outfitted with food, tents, sheets, feed for the horses, and a supply of ready money. “The Revolution is why I have all I have in the first place,” Grandpere Enjolras was heard to say. “I do not mind paying my taxes.”

Almost more importantly than the cart, Grandpere Enjolras loaned them his portable Cassini map. It was a pleasure for all of the to take the folded sheets (cleverly packaged as books), and to spread them out upon the table. Bahorel had never seen a full map of France before. Courfeyrac had, once, at a salon, and Combeferre had sought one out many times, and Jehan had a vague idea of France pieced together from mathematical figures about the size of France and all its borders, but it was still magnificent to see all of France spread before them, an island of carefully painted details, surrounded by the whiteness of the paper.

“These are the old borders,” said Jehan, when he could not find Nice. “But I suppose he had an inkling of natural frontier theory-- here we are, hemmed in by the Alps.”

“I learnt to read from these maps,” said Enjolras, tracing a reverent path along the Loire with his pointer finger.

It was difficult to read a map. It took a skill none of the rest of them had been taught. Bahorel had first learnt to recognize the shape of his home village by landmarks, local history, and the pace of mule (“The spring is two hours ride from the Palais de Justice. Take a left by the tree where the youngest Villenac boy was attacked by bees.”). Then he had gone to Paris, where every street had been named. This strange, static, almost impartial document did not seem to him to be the countryside every peasant who lived there knew through the soles of their sabots and the calluses of their hands.

The reality of France was not quite before them, but still Bahorel looked down at the carefully painted symbols and thought, ‘This. This is where we live. This is what shaped us.’

 

***

 

The cart ride from Orleans to Lyons was long.

Very long.

“We should have rented a boat,” Courfeyrac was heard to grumble, when they had to dig one of the cart wheels out of the mud. “The canals are the way of the future.”

“I think trains,” said Jehan, sliding into the mud.

“I’d give half my family’s farm for a hot air balloon,” replied Bahorel, when, with a mighty heave, they freed the cart-- and so spooked one of the horses, it would have been better to leave the cart stuck in the mud in the first place.

This turned out to be an average day for them. They were always stalled by the horrible conditions of the road, or the absence of road entirely. The horses would spook or grow hungry or simply refuse to move, the path would be blocked because they were surrounded by sheep, and so on, until even Jehan had to admit Rousseau had got it wrong when he talked about the wonders of country living.

“That or Switzerland has much better roads than we do,” said Courfeyrac.

To entertain himself on this tedious and aggravatingly slow journey, Bahorel began to keep a running list of observations about his friends. It was not particularly useful, but it helped to pass the time as they waited for sheep to move or the horses to realize the tree branch before them would not injure them.

Jehan, for example, apparently wrote a lot more poetry than he ever showed his friends. That was because much of it was bad. Bahorel found Jehan both more considerate and a better poet as a result. It took unusual skill to notice when one’s own efforts were actually worth sharing and Jehan’s nature, being mostly retiring, with occasional spurts of confident poesy or outrageousness, led him to be more inclined to hide his work than share it. (‘Also of note,’ Bahorel had jotted down, ‘composing poetry seems mostly to be staring, silently, for hours at blank paper and swearing occasionally.’) Jehan was also able to keep track of more numbers than Bahorel, and could, at a moment’s notice, calculate the distance traveled and the distance still to go when Bahorel pointed out where they were on the maps. Jehan was soon able to calculate the time it would take them to reach places, too, a most valuable skill, for when Courfeyrac was hungry and beginning to whine about where they might find dinner.  

Courfeyrac was the best traveling companion, when he was not hungry. He was sensitive to the desires of all the others, for either conversation or silence, willing to struggle with Combeferre’s traveling chessboard, or to sit wherever there was space. He was adept at all the little tweaks and arrangements that so contributed to one’s comfort. He read aloud the most dramatically, and had had the foresight to bring with him the most entertaining of his trashy novels (“It’s two weeks to Marseilles if the roads are all newly repaired and the coach in perfect condition,” he had replied, when complimented. “And then sometimes a week longer to Aix-en-Provence. I know how to travel at this point.”) If Courfeyrac was hungry, however, he became grouchy and irritable, inclined to tear to pieces any move on the chessboard he found ridiculous, or to call down death upon a splinter digging into his back.

Combeferre was by far the worst traveler. He was so easily and eagerly interested in everything it was a trial to him to roll through stretches of uninhabited country, where he could find no point to expound upon, no new sights to rouse his imagination. Then, too, he read quickly, and soon exhausted his supply of books. As entertaining as Courfeyrac’s romances were, they were not clever enough to entirely capture Combeferre’s capacious intellect. Indeed, Combeferre had twice solved the mystery introduced in Courfeyrac’s Gothic novels before Courfeyrac was halfway through. After the second time, Courfeyrac had tried to throw the novel at him, and shouted, “Let me enjoy my plot holes Combeferre!”

Bahorel learned very little more about Enjolras, save that Enjolras was always like he was when in the Musain: retiring at rest, pleasant when engaged, eloquent when moved to speak. Enjolras was indifferent to whatever was put before him at meals, happy when his friends were happy (even if he was not particularly interested in what was really behind the curtain in the castle of Udolpho), and more alive to the material conditions of the road than could previously be suspected.

Enjolras was also extremely introverted, even more so than Jehan. While Courfeyrac and Bahorel were rejuvenating themselves by trading witticisms, and Combeferre and Jehan hid within their books, Enjolras wandered away in the evenings, gazing at distant horizons or at seemingly empty stretches of road.

“What do you think he’s looking for, when he wanders off like that?” asked Bahorel.

“Respite from us probably,” said Courfeyrac, poking at the fire with a stick. (One of the notes in Bahorel’s notebook was: ‘Courfeyrac always tends the fire. Cause for concern??’) “I know I am everything charming, but even I can weary a person beyond speech through prolonged exposure. Just ask my mother.”

Amidst the general laughter, Jehan said, in an oddly timid voice, “I don’t... I don’t think he is looking for anything, precisely.”

“Is he waiting, then?” asked Bahorel.

Jehan always cradled his books rather than held them, the bottom of the volume resting in his elbows, the top a resting place for his hands. Jehan hugged his book close to his chest and said, slowly, consideringly, “No... not... looking. Not waiting. He’s watching.”

“For what?” asked Combeferre, finally looking up from his book. “Who’s watching for what?”

“Enjolras,” replied Courfeyrac. “Watching for... something.”

“Liberty to go running by with a tricolor flag,” suggested Bahorel.

Courfeyrac laughed. “That’s what you and I would look for-- not Enjolras. I’ll be more prosaic. Robbers. It’s desolate countryside here.”

“No, no, griffins and chimeras and white ladies,” argued Jehan. “That’s what’s here. Robbers! How can you be so pedestrian, Courfeyrac?”

“I can’t be pedestrian if I’ve been riding in a cart. It’d be an etymological disaster.”

 

***

 

The most useful list Bahorel constructed was entitled, ‘Sleeping Habits of My Friends’ (much less salacious than it sounded):

-Combeferre: snores unless perfectly horizontal; kicks in sleep; do not share coach seat with, share bed only if last resort

-Courfeyrac: sprawls; does not appear to retain heat-- good for cold nights, horrible for warm ones. Will steal yr blanket.

-Jehan: takes forever to go to sleep; likes to talk about meaning of life until 3 am-- good if do not need to sleep-- or if can fall asleep before he formulates a question

-Enjolras: ideal. Falls asleep instantly, not roused until touched, seldom moves in sleep.

-self: apparently bulk makes good pillow (thnks Rosalie); will arbitrarily decide I am the best person to sleep next to/ upon / with

Bahorel considered scratching the last conjunction out, but reflected that Combeferre had been too busy to have a mistress since he’d become an intern at Necker, Jehan’s voice had cracked the last time he talked to a woman, and Enjolras was a nineteenth century, male maid of Orleans. Courfeyrac might offer some challenge for ‘with,’  but had Joly gone to Courfeyrac for relationship advice? No! He had gone to Bahorel.

Bahorel underlined the last conjunction instead of crossing it out. He had earned it through a representative expression of the general will.

If there was an inn, they crammed together in the usually filthy beds as best they could, almost all of them thinking longingly of the comparative luxury of their student apartments--all except Enjolras, who merely put his head down and went to sleep with complete indifference to whether he put his head down on a pillow, Combeferre’s shoulder,  or a rock. Bahorel recalled envying Enjolras this inability to be affected by external factors while trying to use a paving stone as a pillow during the hot days of the July Revolution the previous year.

Often they paid to sleep in the hay lofts of farms, and piled new-cut hay into fragrant if somewhat itchy beds. (Occasionally they slept in barns, but this was less fragrant.) Bahorel enjoyed these stays, particularly when he and Courfeyrac topped their hour long riff on saviors in barns with a joke about the tangled hay-lo that Enjolras sported when he woke up. Enjolras took it in good humor and even ventured a grave joke about the necessity of sending for Bossuet. If he had a hay-lo, a funeral oration was surely necessary.

Oftener still they slept huddled together under a tent half propped against the side of the cart. This was cleaner than the inns, and they began to feel relieved when the evening promised to be fine, and there were no towns or villages in sight. They had each other for warmth and the stars for light, and all of France formed their walls and floor and roof.

 

***

 

Bahorel had not known there were so many desolate places in France.

“I don’t know the dialect here,” said Courfeyrac, baffled, as the shopkeeper kept repeating something that sounded almost entirely unlike French.

“No troubadours wandered up here,” said Jehan, sorrowfully. Courfeyrac spoke the most fluent Provencal, Jehan could recite Occitan, and Bahorel could roar out a fine Gascon, but the dialect here was closer to Lyonnais, which none of them could speak.

“This is why universal education is so necessary,” muttered Combeferre, as Courfeyrac managed to convey a need to buy bread entirely through mime. “I never thought it this bad! Traveling through France, unable to communicate with your fellow citizens! We are the French, we should be unified in one culture and one language.”

Enjolras was off thinking about the revolutionary apocalypse or universal human rights while stroking the nose of the right cart horse, and could not be called upon to do something as trivial as purchase bread.  Bahorel would sooner ask to borrow the archangel Gabriel’s flaming sword.

“Anywhere the Mistral blows I can make myself understood to the peasantry,” Courfeyrac grumbled, as the shopkeeper finally accepted a packet of pins for two loaves of bread. “From the eastern Pyrenees to Marseille I can be understood, even if the accent varies, but here! It’s like a different language entirely.”

“You forget that shepherds drive sheep from Arles to the Oisans,” said Bahorel, whose family dealt in livestock. “Any change in the languages of Provence gets carried through them. It is the same in Gascony. All Gascons understand each other, from Bayonne to Languedoc.”

“I would that all Frenchmen understood each other,” lamented Combeferre.

The baker was insisting on something to them.

Courfeyrac shrugged and shook his head.

“There are bandits,” said Enjolras, suddenly.

This startled everyone else. Enjolras always did have a knack for showing he was paying attention when no one expected him to be doing so.

“Can you understand the dialect?” asked Courfeyrac, with some surprise. It had been understood by them all that both Combeferre and Enjolras spoke only French: the former out of principle, the latter out of nature. The purest French was said to be spoken in the Loire.

“I recognized the word for ‘bandit,’” said Enjolras. “It is nearly the same as the word in Parisian argot.”

Combeferre frowned at this, not very pleased that Enjolras should be conversant in more than the mandatory French and Latin of the law school, but the baker was by now nodding and repeating the Lyonnais word for bandit, and gesturing broadly down the road.

“The map says that is the best road to Orleans,” said Combeferre. “We must go that way.”

 

***

 

The map was partially right. In the mid-eighteenth century, when the land had been surveyed, there had been a road. Now it was a potato field.

“Poor Combeferre,” said Courfeyrac, propping his elbow on his knee and his chin on his first. “He cannot even complain! How could he, when he was just telling us how wonderful of an agricultural innovation the potato was.”

“Ah well,” said Bahorel, who was at the reins. “It is almost easier to drive off the road as on it.”

This was true; the roads were little more than packed dirt, littered with gravel, and decorated liberally with ornamental mud pits.

Those who rode in the cart instead of driving often slept during the day, for lack of anything better to do. Courfeyrac reached behind and shook Combeferre awake.

“To the... right,” said Combeferre, once he had woken up sufficiently to consult the maps. “It is all forest to the left.”

They passed through multiple fields where the men were plowing over the stubble of the wheat fields. The men all sang to their horses in different words, but in the same tune, ending on a note that quavered up a quarter step. It was almost like the fields of Gascon. Bahorel felt nostalgic.

“It makes one believe that men really did once speak to animals,” said Jehan, sleepily.

It was almost sad when the songs faded from hearing.

Then it became somewhat of a concern. No noise of bird or beast replaced them. It was night, but still, there should have been owls or foxes hunting.

“Not a good sign,” muttered Bahorel. “We should not make camp.”

“No,” said Courfeyrac. He fussed with his cuffs and then said, abruptly, “I’ll wake Combeferre.”

The sound of the horses snorting and Combeferre’s hand finding his pistol were the only audible noises.

“I think we may be surrounded,” said Combeferre, peering out of the back of the cart.

Bahorel smacked the reins against the horses’ flanks, startling them into jolting forward. Combeferre tumbled back and fired. Bahorel kept his eyes on the road and the horses, listening not for gunshots but for Courfeyrac’s terse, “Pothole to the left,” or  “Tree to the right.”

However, they were outnumbered, and one of the horses spooked and bolted out of the traces. Bahorel was so furious at this failure of husbandry, he did not pay much attention to the robbery. He was eventually made aware of the bandits’ disappointment that the barrels were full of gunpowder instead of wine by the pistol pointing at his temple.

“Is this truly all you have?” asked the pistol wielder, in greatest exasperation. “Gunpowder, old type, and sausages?”

“At one point we also had bread,” said Bahorel. “Or, at least, a rock-like substance we have taken to calling bread, since there is no other term for it.”

“You soften it in milk to make it edible,” said Courfeyrac. “Note that I did not say ‘to make it taste better.’”

“You’re very glib for being held up at gunpoint,” said the pistol wielder.

“Yes, rather,” agreed Courfeyrac, brushing some dust off his coat sleeve.

There was a shout in a language Bahorel could not understand and the pistol wielder shouted back in the same tongue. A slight figure appeared on the road before them, face half-hidden in a scarf. The other bandits treated this newcomer with a great deal of respect, bowing and gesturing to the cart, and listened intently as the newcomer spoke again. The voice was rough and oddly high.

The pistol wielder said, “We have bid you stand and deliver, but you have no food or wine, and very little money.”

“Correct,” said Bahorel, waving Enjolras, Jehan, and Combeferre down. “We are sorry not to have provisioned ourselves better. We had not planned to be robbed.”

“We will take the horses then,” said the pistol wielder.

“Whoa, we need this horse,” said Bahorel. “Where it goes, I go.”

“Then you go with us.”

“I would rather go onto Lyons,” said Bahorel. “Could you not take our sausages and let us continue on our journey?”

The chief of the bandits laughed when this was translated into the local dialect. The sound was high and silvery.

Courfeyrac drew in a sharp breath; Bahorel looked involuntarily at him. Courfeyrac’s acting and miming skills had grown better from necessity, and he managed to convey, through various shrugs, grimaces, raised eyebrows and mouthed words, a fact that Bahorel himself had begun to suspect.

They had been held up by a woman.

 

***

 

They were by now used to sleeping in a rough huddle. The only difference was now they were surrounded by bandits, and they had their hands tied behind their backs. Jehan and Enjolras slept and Combeferre kept his own counsel. Courfeyrac fairly vibrated with the excitement of discovery.

“You should sleep Courfeyrac,” said Combeferre. “You were awake when the bandits fell upon us.”

“You were awake too,” protested Courfeyrac. “And fighting. That saps more energy than being glib in the face of danger.”

Combeferre ignored this. He was excellent at giving advice, and terrible at taking it.

“Bahorel’s awake,” said Courfeyrac, pitifully.

“Bahorel’s on first watch,” replied Bahorel. “Still, move closer to me. We’ll share the watch. I’ll wake you for the next, Combeferre.”

This was so practical, Combeferre could not protest. He went to sleep.

Courfeyrac sidled up to Bahorel and said, “So....”

“So?”

“So!”

“So.”

It was one of their stupider exchanges, but it comforted them both and conveyed a great deal that would not be understood by their captors. It was the reassuring rhythm and pattern of Provencal speech.

When Courfeyrac said, “So....” He meant ‘The leader of the robbers is a woman; I noticed it, and I noticed you noticing me notice it, which in turn suggests you have also taken stock of our captor’s gender.’

When Bahorel said, “So?” He meant, ‘And indeed I noticed, but there is nothing to be gained from that information.’

When Courfeyrac replied, “So!” he meant, ‘Well there must be something! She has taken pains to conceal her gender, after all. She was wearing trousers and a scarf that hid her face.’

When Bahorel replied, “So.” he meant, ‘As true as that is, threatening exposure is not practical when there is no one to tell.’

“It would be ungentlemanly,” concluded Courfeyrac, a little glumly. “And against the Saint-Simonian principles that have more-or-less infected our strain of Neo-Jacobinism, thanks to Combeferre.”

“We are of no fixed sect,” replied Bahorel.

Courfeyrac grimaced. “It would still be extremely ungallant to the lady.”

“An aristo to the last,” said Bahorel, and they tried to shove at each other with their bound hands. “Ah, speak of the devil!”

A lamp was approaching them. The shadowy figure behind it had her face obscured by a scarf. There were two larger men behind her.

Courfeyrac inelegantly scooted over to Enjolras, and nudged him in the side. Enjolras woke and sat up, slowly, warily. The trembling beam of lantern light danced over his fair hair and his fairer features, glancing against the red scarf wrapped dutifully ‘round his throat before jolting up to shine full in his eyes.

Enjolras blinked against the light.

“You,” said the bandit captain, or something close to it. She asked a question.

Enjolras hesitated and then said, slowly, “I am called Enjolras.”

The bandit captain pulled down her scarf and gestured at his.

Courfeyrac guessed at what response was required of them and so got to his knees and twisted his arms about, to better drape Enjolras’s scarf in imitation of the bandit captain’s.

This satisfied her. She nodded and then gestured at Enjolras.

“What? No.” Courfeyrac shook his head vehemently. “No. Enjolras is not going with you.” He managed an awkward scramble to put himself in between Enjolras and the bandit captain.

The others were beginning to stir. Bahorel glanced at them.

The bandit captain was irritated. She sighed, removed her pistol from her belt, and placed it on the ground. She said something, in what seemed to be a sarcastic tone.

Enjolras leaned over to Courfeyrac and murmured, “I thank you, friend Courfeyrac, but savate does not require the use of one’s hands. I am in no danger.” Enjolras turned to the bandit captain and said, “I will go with you, if your men will not injure my friends.”

“Enjolras, no,” said Courfeyrac, with rather too much worry.

Bahorel quickly realized Courfeyrac’s game. It was a clever one. He stifled a grin and said, “Chief, I don’t like this any more than Courfeyrac. Let me come with you at least.” Bahorel glanced at the two, heavy-set men, mere shadows behind the bandit captain. “I could take either of those men if they gave you any trouble.”

“While I thank you for your pains,” said Enjolras, dryly, “I am capable of defending myself.” He gracefully moved to his feet and went off with the bandit captain, some five metres distant.

Courfeyrac and Bahorel glanced at each other.

In Occitain, Bahorel said, “If she doesn’t look closely....”

“Yes, and Enjolras hasn’t bothered to get his hair cut recently,” said Courfeyrac. “So perhaps....”

Half-an-hour later, Enjolras and the bandit captain returned. Enjolras’s hands were free and he was saying, in slow, oddly accented French, “--to free those in Lyons. We must support those willing to stand against tyranny however we can. In ‘30 it was with barricades. This year, it is with the delivery of gunpowder.”

The bandit captain asked another question in Lyonnais.

Enjolras took a moment to decipher this.

She asked something else.

“No, I follow,” said Enjolras. “The freedom of the individual can only come through seismic changes in society. For many years before the Revolution, one bad cold would have caused my family to slide into the direst poverty. Now they are secure. I want the same security for all my fellow countrymen. It is only when we have met the basic needs of all-- for food, for security, for speech-- that we can hope for more. Universal education, universal suffrage--”

The bandit captain nodded. She said something to Enjolras, and then to the two men behind her. The men agreed and then respectfully faded into the darkness.

Enjolras stooped to untie Courfeyrac and Bahorel's hands, and then woke Combeferre.

“What’s going on?” asked Combeferre, sitting up groggily. Jehan yawned beside him.

“We are free to go,” said Enjolras. “The captain agrees with our mission. These bandits lost their lands and their livelihoods with the fall of the Empire.”

They were given back their cart, their barrels, their old type, and their horses (though Courfeyrac’s Gothic romances were mysteriously missing), and sent on their way. Bahorel kept a careful eye on the stars as well as the ground before them, trying to guess his way back towards the banks of the Loire.

“If we follow the Loire the rest of the way, we will soon reach Lyons,” said Combeferre, holding the Cassani map only an inch away from his nose.

“Kind of the captain to let us go,” said Jehan, still a little fuddled from sleep. “Why did he?”

“She,” said Bahorel, eyes on the stars. “She let us go out of solidarity.”

“Yes,” said Enjolras, “there are allies in all parts of Fr-- she?”

“Enjolras, did you really fail to notice the bandit captain was a woman?” demanded Courfeyrac, twisting around to glare into the dark, covered part of the cart.

“It appears so,” said Enjolras, unperturbed.

Bahorel rubbed his face. “I would say I was surprised, but my internal reaction is, ‘oh, of course.’ I confess it, Enjolras. I too, am a woman. I have been binding my breasts to take up arms, as Saint Michael and Saint Catherine first required me to do.”

“It is a pity we have only the two genders in French,” said Jehan, wistfully. “It limits things.”

“Oh,” said Enjolras, in a tone of sudden surprise.

“What?” asked Combeferre.

“Nothing,” said Enjolras.

“Out with it,” said Combeferre, worried. “You were not mistreated?”

“No.” Enjolras hesitated, which he rarely did. “I do not possess the social acumen of Bahorel of Courfeyrac but I think... I think in light of all you have said, the captain might have misunderstood me. She asked how I could understand her and began naming the patois of the Loire region: Blois, Tours, or Orleans. I replied, “Lequel d’Orleans.’”

This phrase, ‘that of Orleans,’ sounded a great deal like, ‘pucelle d’Orleans,’ or ‘the Maid of Orleans,’ a phrase that surely would have resonated with the bandit captain.  

“And I am assuming you said “I follow,' when she asked if you understood her,” said Bahorel, his voice shaking with laughter.

“Yes.”

“I take it she heard, ‘I follow Joan of Arc,’ not ‘I follow your Lyonnais because I am from Orleans,’” Bahorel concluded.

“That seems likely.”

Courfeyrac and Bahorel laughed until Courfeyrac fell off the seat of the wagon and spooked the horse.

 

***

 

It was unanimously decided, upon their arrival at Lyons, a city that chattered with sixty thousand looms, and murmured with revolt, that they would sell the cart rather than try to drive it back to Orleans.

“I love you all,” Courfeyrac had explained, with his most winning smile, “but if I have to spend another two weeks crammed into a cart with you all, I will throw myself into the Loire.”

Bahorel shared this understandable point of view. He was very relieved to come back to Paris in a cleaner, more leisurely fashion, to be able to take himself to the swimming school to refresh himself, and then to have to share a bed merely with Rosalie, who easily topped the list of ‘best people to share a bed with.’

“Good trip?” Rosalie asked affectionately, when he sprawled upon their bed with hedonistic abandon.

“Indeed the best,” said Bahorel, “for now it is ended.”

 

 


End file.
